Then Ill Come Back to You

Then I'll Come Back to You, by Larry Evans,

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Title: Then I'll Come Back to You
Author: Larry Evans

Release Date: July 22, 2006 [eBook #18894]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU
by
LARRY EVANS
Author of Once to Every Man
Illustrated by Will Stevens

[Frontispiece: "I Ain't Never Seen Nothin'," He Stated Patiently. "I Ain't Never Seen More'n Three Houses in a Clearin' Before. I Ain't Never Been Outen the Timber--Till To-Day. But I Aim to See More Now--Before I Get Done."]

New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Copyright, 1915, by The H. K. Fly Company. Copyright, 1915, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company.

To the Memory of
My Mother

CONTENTS.
Chapter
I.
I DON'T MIND IF I DO! II. THE LOGICAL CUSTODIAN III. THREE QUARTERS AND SIX EIGHTHS IV. I'LL TELL HER YOU'RE A BAPTIST V. THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU VI. MY MAN O'MARA VII. HARRIGAN, THAT'S ME! VIII. GREETINGS, SIR GALLAHAD! IX. A MATTER OF ORNITHOLOGY X. NOT A CHANCE IN THE WORLD XI. I NEVER DID LIKE TO BE BEATEN XII. THAT WOODS-RAT XIII. THIS LITERARY THING XIV. A GIRL LIKE HER XV. LAW AND LUMBER XVI. ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN XVII. HONEY! XVIII. I'M TELLING YOU GOOD-BYE XIX. SOME LETTERS AND A REPLY XX. BLUE FLANNEL AND CORDUROY XXI. SETTING THE STAGE XXII. IT HAPPENS IN BOOKS XXIII. TO-MORROW-- XXIV. --AND TO-MORROW, AND TO-MORROW XXV. IN REAL LIFE TOO

ILLUSTRATIONS
"I Ain't Never Seen Nothin'," He Stated Patiently. "I Ain't Never Seen More'n Three Houses in a Clearin' Before. I Ain't Never Been Outen the Timber--Till To-Day. But I Aim to See More Now--Before I Get Done." . . . . . . Frontispiece
"I've Always Had to Wait a Long Time for Everything I've Wanted," the Boy Answered, "But I Always Get It, Just the Same, if I Only Want it Hard Enough."
"Blessings, My Children," He Called to the Two in the Shadow. "My Felicitations! and E'en though I know Not Your Identity, Still I May Sense Your Fond Confusion."
"Oh, I Can't Tell You How Glad I Am to See You So--So Well!"

THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU
CHAPTER I
I DON'T MIND IF I DO!
That year no rain had fallen for a score of days in the hill country. The valley road that wound upward and still upward from the town of Morrison ran a ribbon of puffy yellow dust between sun-baked, brown-sodded dunes; ran north and north, a tortuous series of loops on loops, to lose itself at last in the cooler promise of the first bulwark of the mountains. They looked cooler, the distant wooded hills; for all the shimmering heat waves that danced and eddied in the gaps and glanced, shaft-like, from the brittle needles of the pines which sentineled the ridges, they hinted at depths to which the sun's rays could not penetrate; they hinted at chasms padded with moss, shadowed and dim beneath chapel arches of spruce and hemlock, even chilly with the spray of spring-fed brooks that brawled in miniature rocky canyons. And they made the gasping heat of the valley a little more unendurable by very contrast.
Since early afternoon Caleb Hunter had been sitting almost immobile in the shade of the trellis which flanked the deep verandas of his huge white, thick-pillared house on the hill above the river. It was reminiscent of another locality--the old Hunter place on the valley road. When Caleb Hunter's father had come north, back when his loyalty to a flag and his pity for a gaunt and lonely figure in the White House had been stronger than bonds of blood, he had left its counterpart down on the Tennessee. Afterward, with one empty sleeve pinned across his breast, he had directed with the other hand the placing of the columns. And finally, when he had had to leave this home in turn, along with its high, white painted walls and glossy green shutters, he had passed down to his son his inborn love of the warmth, his innocent delight in indolence--and an unsurpassed judgment of mint. The mint bed still lay where he had located it, to the west of the house, moist and fragrant in the shadow.
Caleb Hunter had been drowsing contentedly since early afternoon, his chin on his chest and the bowl of his pipe drooping down over his